Something occurred to me today...It's quite personal but I want to share it. Further and We Are The Night
were both released around the time two long term relationships of mine ended and subsequently went on to
soundtrack those events. I think that's illustrative of the two different dimensions to Tom and Ed's music - the explosive live energy and also the deeply personal meaning the music takes when listened to privately on your MP3 player. I have to admit when I heard "Snow" and "Swoon" for the first time the lyrics had me fighting off tears, given what is going with me at right now. "K+D+B" and "Wonders Of The Deep" also have kind of euphoric melancholia, as I like to describe it, which makes it an appropriate score for something like a break up.

The other side of that coin is "Escape Velocity", "Dissolved", and "Horse Power" offset the sadness. They are amazingly uplifting tracks, Christ the raw energy in them is something else, when I played them on my stereo this morning I felt like having my own private party


Anyway, it's something I hope other people get out of the CB's music. Sorry if the above is a bit hard to follow, I was writing things as they occurred to me!
I'd love to hear if others have had a similar kind of experience with the music.

Completely agree, not hard to follow at all! all great music is etched in your memory with some wonderful associations - some happy, some tough. I can't till this date listen to Alive Alone because of the same reasons - it tears me apart personally.

Thank you for sharing that pushpop. I follow what you're saying and I think you are clear in outlining the two dimensions of the Chemical Brothers music and the effect it has had over your personal life.

As for me, yes - I have absolutely had intensely personal experiences with their music. There were times before I became, well... a raging fangirl, when I heard the Chemical Brothers, but when I first listened to them, it was during a really rough patch in my life. And when the music opened itself up to me, it kind of took on a personal revelation from the inside. I think in some ways the music found me, not the other way around. And I'm just grateful for that, and it's what endears me to the Brothers. It seems the music comes at a time when I need it. Whether I am aware of this phenomenon at the moment it's happening is neither here nor there - but in hindsight, their albums tend to be landmarks of what is going on personally in my life. And within those albums, some songs are bittersweet, while others make me remember fondly, some songs tell me to live in the moment, and some songs (like most recently, The Pills Won't Help You Now) take their time to reveal themselves in a moment of personal revelation.

Agreed, thankyou all for sharing this, I cant really contribute much without repeating in a different way what's already been said as my experiences are similar (the music coming in times of need like you, whirlygirl or the personal feeling you get when you alone are personally listening like you mentioned pushpop) but I feel sometimes, while I'm listening to certain tracks, the universe and surrounding light years of space around us somehow seem so much less scary and irrelevant to me (the fresh morning bursts of happy that Harpoons brings) or tracks like Swiper making me feel like I can do anything even though all I'm doing at that moment is walking down my street or something.
I haven't felt this more-so than with Chems music is my point.

Great thread Pushpop.

Oh yeah dope coil does that to me!